Author: Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 370
Book Description
Richmond/Hampton Roads Passenger Rail Project
Author: Framework for Evaluation of System Impacts of Intermodal Terminals Using Commodity Flow Data
Author: Chiranjivi Sarma BhamidipatiPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Freight and freightage
Languages : en
Pages : 136
Book Description
With the challenges attributable to increasing freight traffic and roadway congestion it is necessary to investigate opportunities for better management of goods movements. Rail-truck intermodal freight transportation can be considered as one such solution for reducing long-haul truck traffic on highways. For the rail-truck intermodal freight transportation to act as an effective transportation alternative, it is necessary to evaluate its impacts on the transportation system. A framework for evaluation of rail-truck intermodal terminal projects with qualitative and quantitative measures has been established using public goals and private stakeholder perspective. With the use of a case study, some of these measures have been evaluated. Recommendations have also made on data collection procedures for making a full scale evaluation. The case study selected for the Project is the proposed freight intermodal terminal at Petersburg, Virginia, conceived by the Norfolk Southern Corporation. This analysis formed a bridge between a region and a corridor based analysis. The key findings of the study are as follows: (a) Evaluation of an intermodal terminal project requires a systematic multi-regional modeling approach; (b) The impacts of an intermodal terminal are region and trade corridor specific; and (c) In cases where estimated intermodal rail drayage forms a small share of the overall truck traffic, the introduction of an intermodal terminal does not have substantial impacts on accessibility, mobility or safety. The study successfully developed models for estimation of impacts, including a two-stage accessibility model for drayage, a truck-rail mode choice model, truck involved crash models, and secondary local freight traffic impact model, mainly using data from the Commonwealth of Virginia.
Models to Support State-owned Park and Ride Lots and Intermodal Facilities
Author: Socioeconomic and Travel Demand Forecasts for Virginia and Potential Policy Responses
Author: John Sanders MillerPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Transportation
Languages : en
Pages : 120
Book Description
VTrans2035, Virginia's statewide multimodal transportation plan, requires 25-year forecasts of socioeconomic and travel activity. Between 2010 and 2035, daily vehicle miles traveled (DVMT) will increase between 35% and 45%, accompanied by increases in population (28% to 36%), real household income (50%), employment (49%), transit trips (75%), and enplanements (104%). Of the 2.27 to 2.87 million additional Virginians forecast by 2035, most (1.72 to 2.34 million) will settle in one of four planning district commissions (PDCs). These PDCs, and their expected population increases, are George Washington Regional (0.25 to 0.28 million), Richmond Regional (0.33 to 0.41 million), Hampton Roads (0.31 to 0.41 million), and Northern Virginia (0.83 to 1.23 million). Virginia will likely see the number of people age 65 and over double from 1 million at present to 2 million in 2035. Four potential policy responses to these forecasts are given in this report: (1) encourage increased density at select urban locations to reduce CO2 emissions; (2) use cost-effectiveness as a criterion to select project-level alternatives for achieving a particular goal; (3) identify policy initiatives to serve increased demographic market segments, and (4) quantify the economic harm of general aviation airport closures. These policy responses are not the only ones feasible but were selected because they necessitate the interagency coordination that is the premise of VTrans2035. The first two policy responses demonstrate limited but real promise. The first may reduce DVMT by 1.1% to 6.4% of the baseline 2035 DVMT forecast, for a reduction of 1.507 million metric tons of CO2 annually. Yet DVMT is affected to a greater degree by factors over which decision makers exert less influence than with density. For example, the 2035 baseline DVMT decreases by 7% if an alternative population forecast is assumed; 10% to 65% if real household income remains relatively flat; and 49% to 82% if fuel costs increase to $10/gal by year 2035. Thus, the best estimates of travel activity are highly sensitive to underlying assumptions regarding economic conditions, and the report accordingly documents, for each desired forecast, a range of possible values. The analysis of the second policy response found that the cost-effectiveness of plausible alternatives in a hypothetical case study varied by a factor of 3. By extension, this finding suggests that an ability to choose project alternatives based solely on each alternative's ability to meet a single goal or a limited number of goals--and without constraint by funding source (e.g., highway or transit, capital or operations)--can increase the cost-effectiveness of a project. The remaining two policy responses suggest that consideration of diverse alternatives, such as programs to help older persons continue driving, may be productive as suggested in some literature. Because the report does not contain the data necessary to evaluate the impacts of these programs, the report merely identifies such programs and demonstrates how they could be considered given the demographic changes forecast to occur between now and 2035.
Development of a Methodology to Coordinate and Prioritize Multimodal Investment Networks
Author: Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Transportation
Languages : en
Pages : 34
Book Description
Across the nation, there are opportunities to improve coordination among transportation modal agencies, including aviation, transit, ports, highway, rail, pedestrian, and bicycle modes. Virginia's statewide multimodal transportation planning effort VTrans2025 addresses multimodal coordination of transportation investments in the state. Virginia's Secretary of Transportation submitted a final report of the VTrans2025 effort to the Virginia General Assembly in November 2004. The purpose of this study was to demonstrate an analytical methodology that could aid efforts such as this to coordinate and prioritize multimodal investments. The methodology developed can help decision makers to identify and prioritize proposed multimodal investment networks (MINs). These are large-scale coordinated investments in transportation projects across modes. The body of this report describes relevant literature and provides an overview of the developed methodology: (1) prioritization of the MINs, and (2) statistical comparison of modal plans. The analytical methodology developed will be of interest to multimodal transportation planning efforts across the nation, particularly where there is a need for systematic evidence-based approaches to coordinating the efforts of modal transportation agencies. Most data in the report are presented solely for purposes of demonstrating the methodology. The methodology developed in this project fosters improved coordination in planning and programming transportation investments across modal agencies. The potential benefits of the methodology include identification of lower-cost investment alternatives when considering multiple modes relative to considering only single modes to meet a particular travel demand; selection and programming of multimodal solutions that have the highest performance relative to the available or required levels of investment; and increased transparency and accountability of the multimodal agencies for the uses of funding that can be allocated across multiple transportation modes. The costs of implementing the methodology developed in this study are minimal and include one-time training of staff of the modal agencies in the use of the identification and priority-setting methodology and software demonstrated in the current study; and regular interaction and dialogue among the staff of the modal agencies that are involved in the identification and prioritization of investments across modes
Scenario-based Transportation Planning with Involvement of Metropolitan Planning Organizations
Author: James Hamilton LambertPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Transportation
Languages : en
Pages : 78
Book Description
The Office of Virginia's Secretary of Transportation identified 21 transportation policies and 42 performance criteria in Virginia's long-range multimodal transportation plan, VTrans2025. A subsequent planning effort, VTrans2035, provided direction for the effort described in this report. Although there has been considerable discussion of the potential impact of the VTrans policies on the Commonwealth as a whole, there has been little effort to characterize the regional and local impact of the policies. Further, the sensitivity of the policies to a variety of assumptions about the future needs to be better understood at statewide, regional, and local levels. This research effort developed and tested a methodology for scenario-based assessments of the impacts of the VTrans polices for several regions of the Commonwealth of Virginia. The methodology is implemented in an MS Excel workbook that is available for download at www.virginia.edu/crmes/multimodal2. This report describes a typical application of the methodology for a locality or regional planning organization, e.g., a Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) or Planning District Commission (PDC), to assess the impact of statewide multimodal policies across several of its long-range planning scenarios. The report includes a review of scenario-based planning, documentation of future scenarios, preliminary results of a survey of MPOs in Virginia for their best practices in scenario-based planning, an application of the methodology to the Roanoke region of Virginia, and recommendations. A major recommendation is that the methodology be used in VTrans2035 to catalyze and benchmark Virginia MPOs and localities in their respective efforts involving scenario-based transportation planning. The effort provides a cost-effective analysis tool that enables VTrans and MPOs and PDCs to identify and collaborate on the regional impacts of statewide transportation planning. The tool can further be cost-effective for individual MPOs and localities to engage in scenario-based long-range planning as encouraged by the Federal Highway Administration, particularly to guide the assumptions that are input to regional travel demand models. Appendix A provides the survey and study of scenario-based planning best practices. Appendix B documents the design of the Microsoft Excel workbook developed in this effort. Appendix C provides the lists of statewide policies, scenarios, and performance criteria used in the deployment of the workbook. Appendix D describes a related input/output analysis of economic growth based on transportation investments that was requested by the Office of Intermodal Planning and Investment. The developed methodology is being adapted for long-range scenario-based analysis of the Afghanistan Sustainable Infrastructure Plan, with research support from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Research Results Digest
Author: Statewide Transit Goal Setting
Author: Public Roads
Author: A Methodology to Evaluate Unplanned Proposed Transportation Projects
Author: Michelle M. SmithPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Transportation
Languages : en
Pages : 62
Book Description
The Virginia Department of Transportation may be asked to consider proposed transportation projects that have not originated within the transportation planning process. Examples include offers by the private sector to build infrastructure in exchange for permission to develop land, advocacy by a regional government to add an interchange to a National Highway System route to encourage economic growth, a city's plan to narrow an arterial facility to increase community cohesion, and a county's request for pedestrian crossings on a high speed arterial facility. This report refers to these proposals as stand-alone projects. In the short term, stand-alone projects may have significant merit as they can result in the provision of additional infrastructure or improved relations between state and local stakeholders. In the long term, they may not be beneficial if they result in adverse safety or operational consequences for the overall transportation system. Stand-alone proposals are difficult to evaluate because they lack detailed data, have not been studied as part of a region's planning process, require a relatively short response time, and are not discussed in the literature. This report describes stand-alone projects that have been proposed in Virginia, describes a methodology for evaluating them, and applies the methodology to two such projects: (1) a developer's proposal to provide additional infrastructure as part of a desired rezoning, and (2) a county's request to accommodate pedestrians on a 45 mph arterial facility bisecting residential and commercial development. Application of the methodology yielded the advantages and disadvantages for each proposal. For example, although the first project will reduce mainline delay for one facility, it will increase queue delay on another, will preclude the construction of two interchanges, and will increase delay overall. Yet the methodology also reveals that there is not necessarily a best answer: although the second project showed that a pedestrian overpass could accommodate pedestrian crossings at a capital cost of $0.16 per pedestrian crossing (compared to a capital cost of less than $0.01 per crossing for a pedestrian phase at an existing signal), neither alternative ensured that pedestrian risk would be minimized because pedestrian compliance with traffic laws could not be forecast precisely given the data available. In such situations, the utility of the methodology is that it delineates aspects of the proposal that can be assessed with available data in contrast to those that require judgment by decision makers. Because the study found that stand-alone projects are more common than expected and that they may yield negative or positive results, the report recommends that the methodology developed in this study be considered where stand-alone projects are to be evaluated and no other planning process is applicable. Depending on the availability of data, the level of accuracy desired, and the ability of the analyst to select the most appropriate performance measures, the methodology requires roughly 40 person-hours and does not require specialized software.